


Fairytale of Bastogne

by jspringsteen



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Fae & Fairies, Friendship, Gen, Magical Realism, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:09:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21992719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jspringsteen/pseuds/jspringsteen
Summary: “We’re in a dell.”“What, like where fairies and gnomes live?”
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	Fairytale of Bastogne

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tournesol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tournesol/gifts).



Cold was the night, and hard was the ground.

Though the sun had set hours ago and it must now be approaching midnight, it wasn’t completely dark. The snow seemed to glow from the inside out, bathing the forest in a cool, blue light. Cold mist hung between the trees like thickly woven spiderwebs, trapping all sound, its moisture seeping through wool, khaki, skin, right down to the bone.

Eugene Roe was lying in his foxhole, so cold and still he felt like a dead man in an unfinished grave. The frozen ground seemed to suck out every bit of warmth that was left in his body, paralyzing him so he couldn’t move anything except his eyelids – and even keeping those up was beginning to be a struggle.

He had to stay awake. Alert. The apparent peace in the snowy woods had been violently broken each night since they’d been here. They had been shelled three nights in a row around this time of night, and the previous night the men spent five full minutes trying to wake him up. Exhausted from sleeplessness, all his energy spent from spending whole days shivering and running, the dreams he slipped into became deeper and deeper, and harder to come out of. The first thing he remembered seeing was Captain Winters’ worried face, his mouth forming words but no sound reaching his ears. Finally, the sharp pain of a slap on his frozen cheek. Another. And another. That did the trick. He’d breathed in deeply, as if coming up for air, and it all rushed in on him at once—the cold, the shouting, the screaming shrapnel—and he’d bolted upright, and jumped into action.

He’d never seen snow with his own eyes before they marched into the Bois Jacques. Heard of it, of course, and seen it in pictures, and listened to his mother describe in great detail the blizzard of 1899, when the drifts were stacked higher than her ankles and the streets of New Orleans were, for the first time, frozen and slick. But he’d had no notion that a place as cold and wet as the Bois Jacques could exist, just as he now struggled to remember the smell of the swampy air and the balmy breeze that he had breathed in since childhood, the particular bayou-oxygen that was infused in his blood. He hadn’t known how snow could eat a man’s feet until they turned black and fell off. How it seemed so light, yet was so heavy, heavy enough to bury a man. How it seemed to absorb all sound, and how otherworldly it glowed, refusing entry to complete darkness. But also how it made the landscape come alive, glistening with uncountable diamonds; at times, gazing at the bright hole the moon punched in the night sky and the millions of stars, the snow-laden trees and their silver-filigreed roots, he thought he’d never seen a more beautiful sight in all his life, and quietly, almost embarrassedly, thanked God for bringing him here to witness it.

It was strange to be here, with everything one yearns to see when awake and outside on a cold night - any sign of company, any lighted place, any movement, anything suggestive of anyone being up – being banished, for it would attract the Germans. His eyelids drooped as the darkness of sleep began to seep in on the edges of his vision. Eugene found himself at his grandmother’s house on the levee, his feet dangling above the green-glazed water of the bayou. He dipped in a toe, and the water seemed to suck at it; it was so warm and inviting that he hopped off the jetty. The soupy water closed over his head and he found himself in a world of green, surrounded by a glittering kaleidoscope of sunbeams penetrating the surface. He felt safe, even from the alligators, and would have stayed there forever, if not for a muffled voice that seemed to come from above the water, and appeared to be calling that familiar word, his clarion call.

_Help!_

Reluctantly, he began to push down the heavy water and make his way to the surface. The sunlight was piercing, forcing him to close his eyes. Eugene’s head snapped back up, his eyes still closed, instinctively, against the bright beam.

A flare, he thought at first. He carefully opened one eye, and saw only the gloam of the snowy woods. No flare, then, or he would have seen it dying out across the sky. He sat up and looked about him keenly, wondering if maybe one of the men had shone with a flashlight and aimed it at him by mistake – inconceivable, but what other explanation could there be? The flare of a match lighting a cigarette. The headlights of a jeep. But everything was just as still as a few minutes ago, when he’d dropped off. He saw the dark heaps of sleeping bodies in their holes, some under a stretched piece of tarp, others uncovered. The sound of somebody snoring slightly disturbed the dead silence, but only just.

_Help!_

Eugene turned around. It seemed to be coming from behind him, deeper into the forest, away from the front line. Fear pierced his heart; the fear that has dogged him from the start, that he left somebody behind out there to die all alone, out of reach and beyond help, without even one person to hold his hand or Eugene himself to help him slip into a morphine daze and go quietly to his Maker. It happened before, and it wasn’t always his fault; but there was little that more unnerved the men at night than the groans of the dying.

Then he saw it. A light, bright enough to be piercing but wavering, constantly, like a candle in the wind—no, like someone puffing on a cigarette – no, like... like what? Who would be foolish enough to make a light in the dead of night? Maybe it was the dying man’s buddy, giving him a smoke as a kind of last rite.

He glanced over to the positions on the front line. He could see heads moving, and decided to wait a few minutes, to see if anyone else noticed it and would come up to investigate. When several minutes had passed and the guys on guard hadn’t moved, Eugene got up, wincing at the stiffness of his limbs, and, keeping low, began to make his way over there.

He kept his eyes peeled for traces of blood, the hump of a body in the distance, but he didn’t encounter anything out of the ordinary. He passed headquarters company, but all was quiet there, too. Nobody seemed to have noticed the quiet flicker of light or the call for help.

Oddly enough, the closer he got to the light, the smaller and weaker it seemed to become. He was entering an area of the forest as yet untouched by soldiers of either side, and here the snow was thicker and more pristine than he’d yet seen. He kept his eyes on the pinprick of light, which had now begun to disappear with intervals of a few seconds, so that when he stopped to look for it and didn’t see it reappear, it took a while before he realised that he’d simply walked past it. He turned around and retraced his steps, which was easy to do in the snow, until it caught his eye on the left.

A small dome of light had sprung up at the bottom of a pine tree. Eugene approached carefully. When he was just a few feet away, he noticed a small figure at the centre, from whom the light seemed to emanate. His first thought was of the fireflies he’d catch in the evening in Bayou Chene, holding them in a jam jar and lining them up on the porch, and watching the flickering lights grow weaker as the night grew darker.

He squatted down next to the tree, and gazed into the light, which was now so weak as to cast only a little yellow puddle around it. The figure was no bigger than his forefinger, but it had two arms, two legs and a head, and looked just like a little man.

Eugene rubbed his eyes. Sleep deprivation – hunger – shell shock – mentally he began to list the reasons that could lead to hallucinations in battle, all of which he’d had to deal with at least once thus far. Worried, he concluded that his deep, lucid dreams of late must mean he was in the early stages of hallucination. And yet, when he stretched out his hand to touch the figure, he found that he could; it stirred, and emitted a faint cry, so faint Eugene almost didn’t hear it, though all was very still around him.

He stretched out his gloved hands and very carefully picked it up, its waist between his thumb and forefinger, and laid it down in the palm of his other hand. The light, which seemed to be coming from the inside of its skin, pulsed on and off, very weakly now, as if it was smoldering. Eugene stared at it. It wasn’t a firefly, or even a strange, enormous European version of it. It was, indisputably, a man, with normal, human proportions, only so small that it precisely fit the cup of his palm. It wore clothes, too; a skirt of dried pine needles and a shirt that seemed cut out of a leaf. Its hair was very dark, and its eyes were closed.

Eugene sat staring at it. He lifted one finger and gently prodded the creature; it stirred, and its light spluttered for a few seconds, growing now stronger, now weaker, like an overcharged light bulb, before dying away and becoming still again. Eugene was forced to conclude – and yet he found it remarkably easy to believe – that this was a fairy, and that it was in need of his help.

He remembered how his grandmother used to nurse dusty and dehydrated butterflies back to life that she’d found by the side of the road. She’d give them a little sugar water – he recalled the sight of them fluttering around the saucers set out on the porch. He took the fingers of his glove between his teeth and pulled it off. Then, with his bare hand, he opened his bag and fumbled around until he found the remains of the chocolate bar Renée had given him. He broke off a tiny piece with his thumb and forefinger, then enclosed it in his palm. After a few minutes, the chocolate had melted somewhat, and he brought it to the lips of the creature.

At first, nothing happened. Then, the creature stirred again, sniffed, and started nibbling on the chocolate. After a few moments, it opened its eyes, and looked at Eugene, who stared back at it.

Suddenly, he had an epiphany.

Malarkey.

Malarkey was Irish; he’d know what to do with a fairy.

Keeping the light contained between his two gloves, Eugene rushed back towards the front line and made his way to the foxhole Malarkey shared with Muck.

“Malarkey,” he whispered in his ear, and Malarkey sat up right away.

“What? What is it?”

Eugene found himself at pains to explain the situation without sounding like he’d gone mad. So he simply said, “I wanna show you something. Come on.”

“Can’t you show it to me _here_?” Malarkey moaned, as he crawled out from under his wool blanket and stood up, his teeth chattering. Eugene walked ahead of him, a few paces until they reached a small grove of trees. Then, he opened his hands.

The fairy was glowing again, still weakly, but with renewed vigour. Eugene looked at Malarkey, whose face was bathed in the yellow light and whose mouth had fallen open.

“Is that—a _fairy_?

“I think so,” Eugene said. “I found it in the woods.”

Malarkey looked from him to it, and back again, and closed his mouth. “I don’t believe this. I haven’t seen one of these since I was a kid.”

“But you’ve seen them?” Eugene asked, relieved to know he wasn’t hallucinating after all.

Malarkey nodded. “Just once, though. My Irish grandma used to talk about them all the time. She called them the Fae. She’d bake honey cakes for them to eat and put them in the windowsill. One night, I couldn’t sleep and went downstairs for a glass of milk, and I saw them sitting on the plate, eating. I was so scared I ran back upstairs, woke the whole house.” He smiled wryly and rubbed one sleepy eye.

“This one doesn’t seem that scary,” Eugene said. He stared down at it in faint wonder. Malarkey clutched his arm.

“Wait, don’t you know anything about fairies?” He had suddenly grown serious, and stared at Eugene with wide eyes.

Eugene frowned at him. “Nothing other than they like sweet stuff to eat.”

Malarkey closed his palm over Eugene’s, as if afraid the fairy would eavesdrop on them, and whispered:

“I wasn’t afraid of them for no reason. There are rules, Doc. Like, you always gotta let them make the first move. You want to be friendly, but not invite them in or anything. If any of them gives you a gift, keep it a secret between you and the fairy. And don’t accept their invitation to dance with them – you’ll end up dancing to your death, believe me.”

Eugene was baffled. “What? All this for—”

“They can make your life a living hell,” Malarkey warned, “or they can give you things you never dreamed of. You saved this one’s life, so, it’s indebted to you. That’s good. But be careful to never end up in that position yourself.”

Eugene thought of his grandmother’s spirits, and how she always had to appease the bad ones with offerings before she could do any of her healing. It made sense to him.

“Well, are there any more rules?” Eugene asked.

Malarkey began to count on his fingers. “Let's see. Never say thank you, that way you admit you owe them something and have to pay them back. Don’t give them your real name – it gives them power over you. Don’t lie to them, be polite, always keep your promises, don’t go running your mouth after seeing one…” He thought for a minute. “The good news is, debts will always be repaid. So you’re in the clear, I think.”

They both looked at it, still nibbling on the chocolate, without saying anything.

“I did wonder,” Eugene said, “why nobody else saw it but me. It’s like it was calling to me. I think I heard it cry for help.”

“That’s not a hard one to figure,” Malarkey said promptly. “They hate iron more than anything, especially cold iron. And you’re the only one here who doesn’t carry a weapon.”

At that moment, the fairy began to move. It rolled back and forth across Eugene’s palm a few times, then it sat up, rubbed its eyes and stretched, as if it had just woken up from a deep sleep. Its wings, which had been folded into its back, stretched. One of them, Eugene saw, was ruptured; its top half was almost severed and hung limply alongside.

The fairy opened its eyes. It looked from Eugene to Malarkey, then back to Eugene.

 _“C’est vous qui m’avez sauvé?”_ it asked. Its voice was as clear as a bell; there seemed to be an echo to it, despite the heavy fog.

 _“Oui,”_ said Eugene. He cast a glance at Malarkey, who was looking nervous.

 _“Comment vous appelez vous?_ ” the fairy asked.

 _“Vous pouvez m’appeler ‘Doc’,”_ said Eugene, remembering Malarkey’s lesson. The fairy nodded, and looked at his companion. It wrinkled its nose.

_“Et c’est quoi votre nom?”_

“Uh...” Malarkey stuttered. He looked at Eugene, panicked.

“What’s going on?” Eugene whispered. “Just tell it what to call you.”

“I’m carrying a gun,” Malarkey whispered.

“So?”

“I told you! Cold iron offends the crap outta them. Besides, I don’t know a word of French. I’m afraid it’ll trick me into saying something I’ll regret. You do the talking.”

 _“Vous pouvez l’appeler ‘Bullshit’,”_ Eugene said. _“Je m'excuse pour mon ami qui porte du fer._ _Nous sommes des soldats._ _”_

The fairy nodded solemnly, not at all fazed by these strange names, but still keeping a wry eye on Malarkey. _“Très bien, ‘Doc’ et ‘Bullshit’. C'est très gentil à vous de m'avoir sauvé. Si vous pouviez m'aider à réparer mon aile? Je vous accorderai chacun une aubaine en retour.”_

As soon as Eugene had translated what the fairy had said, Malarkey began to stammer and back away. “N-n-no, Doc. Tell him thank you kindly, but I don’t need any boon, thanks. I’m good. I don’t wanna be in his debt,” he whispered, as if the fairy wouldn’t be able to hear the last part.

“You won’t be,” Eugene said. “Just hold it while I fix its wing, and you’ll be fine.” He told the fairy: _"Vous êtes très gentil. Je vais réparer votre aile."_

He deposited the fairy in Malarkey’s palm, then rummaged around in his bag for the right tools. Miraculously, nobody had come to see what they were doing talking in the middle of the night; it was as if a cloak had been thrown over them by the fairy’s magic.

It was just as well, because the light coming from the fairy burnt brighter than ever before. Eugene had to squint against it as he worked on the wing, yet it also filled him with a sort of quiet joy. It wasn’t warm, like a fire, yet it seemed to make the air around them less cold for the time being, so that his hands remained warm as he worked and the muscles in his face began to thaw. Malarkey, too, had stopped squirming and stood still as a statue, with a peaceful look on his face that seemed to suggest he was reconsidering some of his prejudices.

Using a toothpick, Eugene made a splint for the wing, tying it together with a piece of gauze that he hoped was light enough for the wing to move normally. When he was finished, the fairy slowly flapped its wings, and a broad smile appeared on its face. It lifted up, slowly at first, then picked up speed and zoomed around Eugene’s head, dipping and somersaulting just like, Eugene thought again, fondly, the fireflies on the bayou.

The fairy landed on his outstretched hand, and addressed itself to him.

_"Merci, ‘Doc’. Je pourrai bientôt voler à nouveau. Vous pouvez maintenant faire un vœu, et je l'exaucerai.”_

Eugene, who had been thinking about his answer while he’d been fixing up the fairy’s wing, replied: _“Nos hommes manquent de nourriture et de fournitures médicales depuis des jours._ _Pouvez-vous nous en procurer?”_

The fairy nodded once. _“C’est déjà fait.”_

He looked at Malarkey, who was hopping from one foot to another, trying hard to think of something that would keep him in the good graces of the fairy realm.

“A p-p-packet of Luckies?” he whispered to Eugene in the end.

Eugene nodded, and translated. The fairy solemnly inclined its head to Malarkey, and repeated: _“C’est déjà fait.”_

He fluttered upwards, did two somersaults, and zigzagged away rapidly among the trees. Eugene followed the light with his eyes. Again, even at a great distance, it appeared very bright to him.

“We can’t tell anyone about this,” Malarkey said.

Eugene turned around to face him. “But you told me about the time you saw fairies as a kid.”

“I know,” Malarkey moaned. “That’s gonna come back to bite me in the ass, for sure.”

They walked back to their foxholes. Malarkey climbed in next to Muck, who was so fast asleep he didn’t even notice. As he settled in under his blanket, he felt something in his pocket that hadn’t been there before. He pulled it out. It was a packet of Lucky Strikes – but when he opened it, it was empty.

Malarkey sighed. “I knew it,” he muttered. “I should’ve asked for a _full_ packet, not just _a packet._ ”

Eugene climbed into his foxhole, shook the encrusted snow off his wool blanket, crawled underneath it and fell asleep almost immediately.

He was back on the jetty, only now, it was dark. As he looked out over the water, bright little dots began to gather before him, like little winking eyes in the darkness. As he watched, they began to circle around him, bobbing up and down like horses in a carousel; and soon he found himself dancing along with them, faster and faster, until it felt like his feet were hardly touching the ground.

Suddenly, he heard Malarkey’s voice: “You’ll end up dancing to your death, believe me.”

At this, the lights scattered and began to whizz about rapidly, like a swarm of bees. They descended on Eugene, who tried to shield his head with his arms, but they got into him all the same, crawling into his ears, his nostrils, his mouth. The next thing he knew, everything was dark again; only now, it was him who was glowing from the inside. He felt warm and light, his stomach a-flutter as if the fireflies were still alive in there, as if he himself would be able to fly.

When Eugene woke up, he felt more keenly than ever how heavy his waterlogged uniform and boots were. Yet, before he even opened his eyes, he knew that something was different. The forest, no longer a murky grey, was glowing in the sunlight, blindingly white, and echoing with the excited shouts of men. He clambered out of his foxhole and ran towards the tree line, where soldiers were jumping up and down and yelling.

The sky was full of airplanes dropping yellow, blue, red and white parachutes. The sight filled him with joy like that of a child seeing colourful balloons at a fair.

 _“Merci,_ ” he whispered, on the off chance that the fairies wouldn't be listening. He remembered Malarky's warning about thanking them, but he felt compelled to do it all the same.

He allowed himself to stand there for a moment, taking it all in, then sped forward to join the others and get the first crack at the medical supplies. Renée would be pleased.

**Author's Note:**

> French translations:
> 
> * “Was it you who rescued me?”  
> * “What’s your name?” – “You may call me ‘Doc’.”  
> * “And what is your name?” – “You may call him Bullshit. I apologise for him carrying iron. We are soldiers.”  
> * “You were very kind to rescue me. I kindly ask you to help fix my wing. I shall grant you each a boon in return.”  
> * “That’s very kind of you. I shall fix your wing.”  
> * “Thank you, ‘Doc’. I shall be able to fly again soon. You may now make a wish, and I shall see that it is done.”  
> * “Our men have gone without food and medical supplies for days. Can you get us some?”  
> * “It’s already done.”  
>   
> Please comment if you enjoyed! :-)  
>   
> I misspelled 'fairy tale' as an homage to 'Fairytale of New York', my favourite Christmas song.  
> A very happy (belated) Christmas to all!


End file.
